If everyone involved is good emotionally after such a tragedy, then more power to them. I'm just a different person and have never had a relationship that would allow me to pursue this situation. Well, maybe when I was an undergraduate after a night of binge drinking and my best friend's GF was hot and.... nevermind. 15 minutes of shame.

looks like interesting film.
I would rather not speculated about the implications of marrying one's best friend's wife. Should be a private thing IMHO.

If you want to think about survivor's guilt, I just watched a film "Primo", a one man stage enactment of Primo Levi's book "If This Is a Man". About surviving Auschwitz. In brief, it seems the real heroes didn't. Anyway, one of the most arresting films I've ever watched. Produced by the National Theater.

I see no issue whatsoever. Especially when one lives an extreme lifestyle and families have been close there is a deep understanding of what drives a person. Jennifer wrote a beautiful book

Forget Me Not

. She clearly had a deep and profound love for Alex. There are not many partnerships that can endure the rigors of what each brought to the new union...yet they have flourished in honoring Alex's memory and progressing with their own family. Requires a maturity that many people just can't seem to bring to a relationship. To often we get stuck in me me me. I don't think it's been easy, especially being in the public eye, but a memory that is honored and lives that move forward...

Not at all uncomfortable by what happened to them. Not at all uncomfortable Jennie wrote a book. Not at all uncomfortable in anyway Conrad deals with it. Wish them all the very, very best. May all their lives be long & wonderful!

Maybe if you only deal with this as a sound bite and know little of the full lifetimes of details around it (not saying that I know anything of the relationships involved).

Doesn't bother me in the least.

I was going to mention the practice (more of a yesteryear thing likely) of a brother marrying his brother's widow and Grover just did note that. I think this may have happened quite a bit in the Civil War time (my only reference off the top of my head for that is the show Deadwood, though!).

I just didn't like seeing Alex being edited out. That was a bit creepy.

I knew Alex and climbed with him in Bozeman. Took a hike with him and the family not long before his accident. The hike served as a way to interview him for a Climbing magazine article that I never felt comfy doing after that.

A great guy. And one of the most born-to-climb guys I ever knew. It always amazed me to see him throw a 60#-plus pack on his shoulders and take off with those wire-thin legs of his at a pace that I couldn't match with a daypack.

seems kinda childish and covetous to feel "uncomfortable" about this kind of situation. unless you are hanging on to some ancient "my woman = my property" sort of morality, or a sophmore in the throes of a tragic breakup. maybe gunkie is just trying out his new Fisher Price Internet Trolling Kit™ he got for xmas.

I'm really sorry this thread didn't focus on the wonderful work of Conrad's climbing school and workshops for Sherpas which has saved countless Sherpa lives. The Sherpas themselves are certainly cognizant of the decline in fatalities thanks to knowing some mountaineering technique now.

I also know a lot about the guilt of the survivor. It's endemic to everyone who shares a pursuit at which someone else who was more skilled than they, dies, and they are left alive.

And then there's the issue of remarriage. How is it that people who support gay marriage frown at widow remarriage? As an anthropologist I can tell you that many societies including the Hebrew Old Testament, mandate marrying a brother's widow. That's why it's called the levirate. Many other warrior societies like the Plains Indians had such agreements between ceremonial brothers as well. Then there are the agricultural societies like India and China that mandated life long widowhood even for teenage widows. Which do you think brought about greater human happiness and productivity?

I was on an expedition where half of our six-man team was killed. I had survivor's guilt for 3 decades. I thought that the other survivors hated me.

Then I met the other survivors 30 years later - and one of the widows, and his 30 year-old daughter who was in utero at the time of his death. The warm reception that I received was very healing, and I realize now that I had nothing to do with the accident.